Homebrew Rackmount Watercooling

Airspirit writes "For those of you who believe that bigger is always better and have multiple computers in your house, this system may be a way to keep them all cool and organized. As an added bonus, it will heat a medium sized apartment all by itself! This article at Pro/Cooling gives a step by step walkthrough describing the evolution of this five gallon monstrosity. Not only does this cover the construction of the cooling system, but the drawbacks such as algae prevention and maintenance as well."

Comments

energy consumption

[jacquesm]

this makes you wonder how long it will be before information surpasses transportation as the largest consumer of energy on the planet

Re:AMD

[MattRog]

That's why I leave my Athlon-based PC in my other room running 24/7 in the winter. It's cheaper than running the heater (my apt is old and doesn't have central air/heat, just crappy space heater things in each room) and less chance of catching something on fire, too.

However here in the summertime it causes the room to be noticeably warmer than the rest of the apartment; the in-window a/c unit has to work overtime to keep that room cool.

To be fair, the PC I had before this one (dual PIII500â(TM)s) allowed (forced?) me to *open a window* in the middle of winter and actually position a fan to bring cool/cold air from outside to chill the computer. Kind of ridiculous, but having dual CPUs (which were the fastest at the time) made up for it.

Nowadays CPUs are so fast that for home use it would be extravagant, but when the dualie eventually caught fire (watch where you place jumpers -- don't short out motherboard fan pins) and was replaced with a single-CPU version (one of the procs was still salvageable) I was amazed at how much slower things became (trying to rip/encode a CD, listen to an MP3, and do something else at the same time resulted in data errors, skipping in MP3 playback, etc.).

Yoshi's Mod

[NeB_Zero]

Yoshi DeHerrera of TechTV has an article about how to use HFE from 3M to build a submerged cooling system for a computer. Find it here.

Re:New applications on the horizon

[alexre1]

Thats actually a very interesting idea. I wonder if it's possible to channel some of the heat
coming from the CPU, HDD's, RAM etc to power the computer. I'm not suggesting that this could
possibly furnish all required power (IE not a perpetual computer :)). But perhaps the heat
could be transferred so that it would contribute somewhat to the powering of the
computer. If this was efficient, and significant enough, it could save us a lot of money on our
power bills in the long run :) Plus, its a *very* elegant solution to the heating problem.

Any thermal physicists out there? I don't know much on this subject. Is it possible at all?

Re:AMD

[alexre1]

I live in Toronto, Canada. Most winters, the average temperature is ~ -15 degrees centigrade.
This past winter, for some reason our central heating died for a few days. My room (with my
lovely AMD Athlon 1.2GHz) was the only warm room in the house :) It actually got quite annoying...
my room became a living room of sorts for the family that week.

In any case, the point is that those AMD CPU's run QUITE hot :)

I remember back when the AMD (socket not slot) Athlons were first released, some tech review
website had a video of a Athlon burning out in 2 seconds. The CPU went from room temperature to
300+ degrees in less than 2 seconds. Mind you, that was without any cooling (heatsink/fan), but
still it gives you an indication of how hot those suckers can get.

Re:Water Cooling

[while(true)]

Here is a link to Yoshi's Submersion Cooling Case. They used hydrofluoroether (HFE) from 3M.

Water flow rate? Tubing size?

[1010011010]

I've got conduit running from the second floor computer room in my house into both the attic and crawlspace. I'm thinking of doing something like this, and running the heat exchanger portion under the house, to take advantage of the cool climate under there, and provide and emergency outlet for leaks. I'm thinking of using copper tubing on the two heat-exchange ends, with polymer tubing in between (in the conduit). I'm wondering what the flow rate would need to be, and how big the tubing would need to be to support that flow rate. Not being a fluid-flow or heating/cooling engineer of any type, I'm posting this question. :) It would be convenient to be able to use ordinary fish-tank equipment. The height of the water loop will play into that -- it has to be pumped up and down about 20 feet.

no not bleach.

[chunkwhite86]

I use 8 parts distilled water, 3 parts "G12" (pink colored) VW/Audi/Mercedes engine coolant* and 1 part denatured alcohol.

I've been algae and critter free** for over year now with no maintenance required at all.

* This is probably the best coolant you can buy. It is free of all corrosive chemicals that "regular" coolant has, and it prevents corrosion due to dissimilar metals better than other coolants. ** My PC watercooling rig is pristine and clear and free of bacteria and algae and small animals. If it weren't for the toxic coolant and alcohol, I could drink it.